If you’re missing the library, you can feel connected through our new podcast Chatting in the Stacks.
Over the last few months, our library volunteers have been breaking the number one library rule – silence – and joining our curatorial trainee Chloe Austin for some quality conversations in the Stuart Hall Library.
If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the library, now is the perfect chance to hear from our volunteers who know it best. Every few weeks a new volunteer will be sharing their favourite finds from the collection and discussing how the library supports their research interests.
Latest Episode
Ep 6 with Xiaoyi Nie
Curator Xiaoyi Nie joins our host to discuss her research, titled ‘Collective Marching As A Curatorial Method’, focusing on the curatorial project ‘Long March: A Walking Visual Display’ (2002). In the library Xiaoyi worked on compiling a bibliography of the curator Hou Hanru and transcribing some of Hanru’s recordings of interviews with Chinese artists which he made during his trip to China in 1994.
Listen on:
Past Episodes
Ep.1 with Cheraine Donalea Scott
Doctoral candidate Cheraine Donalea Scott joins our host to discuss her research into grime and culture, they discuss the emergence of grime, the parallels between grime and 1970s punk culture and the policing of music.
Listen on: SoundCloud | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Cheraine’s library picks are:
Syd Shelton, Rock Against Racism, 2015; Race Today (September 1976, vol 8 no. 9); Maxwell Tremblay and Stephen Duncombe, White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race, 2011; Rhian E. Jones, ‘Music, politics and identity: from Cool Britannia to Grime4Corbyn: The radical tradition in music, in its multifarious forms, has never gone away,’ Soundings (Winter 2018: 67); Monique Charles, ‘Grime Labour,’ Soundings (Spring 2018: 68) and BFM: Black Filmmakers.
These can be found on our reading list.
To hear more from Cheraine, check out her blog post Rock, Riots and Racism: exploring the parallels between 1976 and present-day Britain.
She can also be found on:
Twitter @goldielocs16
Instagram @goldielocs16 and @getaperspective
Ep.2 with Stephen Weller
Art History grad Stephen Weller joins our host to share his knowledge of Net Art. They chat about the emergence of Net Art, networked culture, exhibiting and archiving Net Art as well as touching on the work of Mendi and Keith Obadike, Devin Kenny, Keith Piper, Donald Rodney, E. Jane, Olia Lialina and even Jennifer Lopez.
Listen on: SoundCloud | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Stephen’s recommendations:
Lisa Nakamura, Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet, 2008 and the Net Art Anthology. Find them on our reading list.
Make sure to check out Stephen’s blog posts Acknowledging the Body in Online Art and Review: AUTOICON: The digital body – a work by Donald Rodney.
Ep.3 with I-Ying Liu
Curator, I-Ying Liu joins our host to discuss her projects By Way of Returns (2019), and Infiltrating the In Between. They touch on topics including transitional justice in Taiwan, deconstructing the idea of Chinese Art and alternative forms of curation while exploring I-Ying’s main research interests: migration, language, translation and the concept of history.
Listen on: SoundCloud | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
I-Ying’s recommendations:
2 March 1981 by Ting-Ting Cheng; The Shanzhai Lyric; Yishu; Odd One Out; Daikon; OOMK: One of My Kind; Amelia Jones, Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art and History (2012), and Xiaoyu Weng and Hou Hanru, One Hand Clapping (2018).
Find out more about the journals and zines on our reading list.
To hear more from I-Ying have a read of her blog post A view from elsewhere: Ten ‘Chinese’ Contemporary Artists, or her latest article in Cinezen.
Ep.4 with Kaya Birch-Skerritt
Member of mother tongues – an interdisciplinary and research-led project which applies decolonial, feminist and queer theory to explorations of language and identity – Kaya joins Chloe to discuss zine culture, DIY movements, consumerism and Kaya’s use of zines as source material for her degree in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.
Listen on: SoundCloud | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Kaya’s library picks were Shotgun Seamstress zine and Revelation: the expressive multicultural arts guide, a periodical featuring articles on Sonia Boyce, Shirin Neshat, David Adjaye, Eddie Chambers and Rick Alrick.
Both of these can be found on our reading list.
Kaya and mother tongues can be found on Instagram at @g2hkaya and @mother.tongues_.
Ep.5 with Rashi Rajguru
Artist Rashi Rajguru joins our host to discuss her work in the Stuart Hall Library which was split between working to improve access to the audio visual collection by transcribing materials and researching for her new publication which takes the first-ever image of a black hole, created by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration as its starting point.
Rashi reads from her transcription of Iniva’s first-ever symposium Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts highlighting the importance of the discursive space between formal presentations through excerpts from Everlyn Nicodemus’ post-talk Q&A. She also shares her transcription of Stuart Hall’s conversation with Michael Hardt from Iniva’s 2002 Changing States programme, in which Hall describes action against climate crisis pushing for a ‘planetary consciousness,’ as opposed to increased nationalism.
Listen on: SoundCloud | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Rashi’s recommendations:
Lisa Messeri, Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds, 2016; Katie Paterson, Candle (from Earth into a Black Hole), 2015; Graham Harman, Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything, 2018; Ytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism: The World Of Black Sci-Fi And Fantasy Culture, 2013; Maria Popova, Figuring, 2019; Black Quantum Futurism; Migrant journal; Anna Tsing, The Mushroom At The End Of The World, 2015.
You can find out more about Rashi at her website and keep in touch on Instagram to find out more about her upcoming book.
Huge thanks to Shepherd Manyika and ETAT (Encouragement Through the Arts and Talking) who have allowed us to use music they produced in collaboration with local Westminster residents in the podcast, you can find out more about this project here.